Thursday, February 08, 2007

Then spake the lily maid of Astolat:"Sweet father, all too faint and sick am IFor anger: these are slanders: never yetWas noble man but made ignoble talk."- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls Of The King: Lancelot and Elaine

I have no dog in this hunt: I don't care if her husband killed her son, or if he killed her. I don't have any particular fascination for Ms. Smith beyond what I've seen on the news and read in the paper.

I do know that, for some reason, I mourn her this day.

Like so many before her, her life was a tragic one, and seemed to grow more tragic each passing year. I cringed when she had her television show (I didn't watch it, but I saw the excerpts the jackals of gossip shows and snarky commentary passed along). I marveled at her weight changes, and when finally, at long last late in 2006, she seemed to have found footing, I was glad for her.

God proved last year, using her as an example, that He will try our patience until the bitter end, and that He makes no distinctions between good and evil, between innocence and stained, all He cares about is proving a point.

That point? To be determined. Ms. Smith lived a life I would not want for all the fame and fortune in the world, which was both the reward and the price she paid for that life. That she lived her life, her pain and her rare glories out in the public eye for all, even the most unworthy of us to comment on says a lot about our culture and how ugly it truly is.

She was a beautiful woman, even when that beauty was scarred and scared.

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing